Use not only strengths but changes, challenges, stressors, even failures to optimize potential? YES! Here are ten ways, ten practical, powerful ways to start building your 3Q Edge™:

STEP 1:. Embrace change, embrace your incredible ability to adapt, learn and relearn.See change with new eyes, eyes that help you reset default thinking patterns thinking. Recognize that change is not a problem; it is our greatest opportunity to adapt, learn, re-learn, evolve and lead forward.Our intrinsic or automatic response is to fear change, react to change, balk at change. So what? When we recognize that while this pattern served us well in the caves but will not take us forward today, we can embrace change with positivity. Push yourself to make a positive change in thinking, doing in a routine action every day. A small change made consistently is powerful and leads to BIG changes.

STEP 2. Refuse to be a victim or a victimizer.Victims cannot recognize their own power; victimizers feel truly powerless and can only get empowered by abusing others. Our ability to be a victim or victimizer is the easiest course of action, the default pattern that arises when we are confronted by fear, stress or challenges. Resetting this default pattern is doable for most people. We all slip into the victim or victimizer role at times, because it is perhaps an automatic default, a need or desire to have someone give us all the answers, or to quell our own fear about not being able to by in total control of our lives. Realizing me are slipping, and make a thought course correction that allows us to become free of the victim or victimizer role is transformational.

STEP 3. Turn failure, challenges and stressors around by making everything a learning and growing experience. Change your headspace, think counter-intuitively because success is often born of failure or challenges. Develop an attitude for gratitude, not only for what you have but for the very challenges you face. Human history tells us that our greatest inventions were the results of our greatest challenges. Personal history tells us that more often than not our greatest learning, our most important personal evolution occurs when we have faced an incredible struggle or challenge and come out the other side with our head, heart and values intact. Cultivate the art of failing forward! Model failing forward, use it to transform failures into positive learning experiences.

STEP 4. You are your thoughts. Use them carefully to live, learn and lead forward.Get provocative with your thoughts by turning them around! Refocus, repurpose. See challenges and strengths with NEW eyes. Learn how to R-E-A-C-H™ (Redirect focus-Empower Confidence-Optimize Potential-Harvest Results)Understand that your world is your thoughts; your consciousness creates your world. Most of us have the ability to control our thoughts, to develop our minds and give orders to our brain that help us live, communicate and lead forward smarter, faster and happier. Neuroscience is teaching us that neuroplasticity; the ability to rewrite our brains is real. Neurogenesis has been located in the hippocampus and we are at the cusp of discovering new ways of tapping into the incredible ability of our minds to help our brains optimize their potential.

STEP 5. Drown out the noise and refocus on what is truly important.What is your end game? What do you really want from your life, your relationships, your job/your career? Dig deeper in order to get clarity on YOUR purpose. Find it, embrace it and use it to lead forward. We each have a unique purpose that drives our best thoughts, best actions and best outcomes. Every purpose is important to our individual and collective success and happiness. Take time to reflect upon what you really want. I believe that what we all truly want is love and a sense that we have something important to contribute. Find out what love really means to you, and remember that your true purpose is a purpose that is founded in sustainability, in the ability to do something that creates value for yourself and others. The value you contribute can be as simple a smile and empathy for others that contribute to a happy home or workplace or as complex and challenging as leading an organization or country. What remains critical is finding your true purpose and recognizing it in your daily thoughts and actions.

STEP 7. Develop a community of purpose.In a social world, in the new age of innovation success is achieved through and with the collaboration of others. Whether you want to do well at your job, build your career, department, business unit, organization, community or country you are impotent without the collaboration of those you can trust and those who share your values and objectives. On a personal level we all need a community of purpose, a core group of friends and advisors in who share our values, understand and applaud our objectives and will be there to add the critical human touch, the human heart to our daily lives. We all need a community of refuge where we can tell our truth, share our wins and challenges in total candor, knowing that we will be accepted with the confidentiality and empathy we need to lead forward. On a macro level communities of purpose represent employees, constituents and stakeholders who share our values and objectives; people who will help us champion the cause and lead forward.

STEP 8. Celebrate your ability to be the difference and make a difference, nothing is more important. Building a better self, better team, better business unit, better organization and a better world starts with YOU. We each have a critical role to play in our best life, best work environment and best world. A role that starts when we decide to win the race with the wolves that are chasing us, one positive purposeful step at a time. A role that is solidified when we decide to become part of the solution by living, learning and leading forward every day in every way! Yes we can!

STEP 10. Build constructive discontent.Hone your ability to feel something difficult (even painful), while taking on the role of the participant observer. There is a body of research supporting the power of re-framing, but building constructive discontent is more than re-framing. Constructive discontent is also learning to use what you are feeling and thinking to become the participant observer by witnessing what you are feeling but not being held hostage by the feelings. Taking the role of the participant observer can help you step out of the immediate situation, watch the emotions, let them pass, and re-focus on your true goal or objective. Learning to be the participant observer in your life, in your relationships and your career is a critical skill that can change your life.

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[…] Success at the speed of change means embracing a mind-set and skill-set that can help YOU play to strengths, AND USE changes, challenges, stressors, even failures to ideate, communicate, collaborate, lead and succeed forward by building three essential strengths:Q1-IQ (intelligence-focus-strategic thought-ability to learn-relearn)Q2-EQ (emotional mastery-self management-relationship management-risk tolerance/resiliency, communication)Q3-SQ (values alignment/positive purpose, integrity of thought communication and action)Use not only strengths but changes, challenges, stressors, even failures to optimize potential? YES! Here are ten ways, ten practical, powerful ways to start building your 3Q Edge™: STEP 1:. Embrace change, embrace your incredible ability to adapt, learn and relearn. See change with new eyes, eyes that help you reset default thinking patterns thinking. Recognize that change is not a problem; it is our greatest opportunity to adapt, learn, re-learn, evolve and lead forward. Our intrinsic or automatic response is to fear change, react to change, balk at change. So what? When we recognize that while this pattern served us well in the caves but will not take us forward today, we can embrace change with positivity. Push yourself to make a positive change in thinking, doing in a routine action every day. A small change made consistently is powerful and leads to BIG changes. […]

[…] Success at the speed of change means embracing a mind-set and skill-set that can help YOU play to strengths, AND USE changes, challenges, stressors, even failures to ideate, communicate, collaborate, lead and succeed forward by building three essential strengths:Q1-IQ (intelligence-focus-strategic thought-ability to learn-relearn)Q2-EQ (emotional mastery-self management-relationship management-risk tolerance/resiliency, communication)Q3-SQ (values alignment/positive purpose, integrity of thought communication and action)Use not only strengths but changes, challenges, stressors, even failures to optimize potential? YES! Here are ten ways, ten practical, powerful ways to start building your 3Q Edge™: […]

[…] Success at the speed of change means embracing a mind-set and skill-set that can help YOU play to strengths, AND USE changes, challenges, stressors, even failures to ideate, communicate, collaborate, lead and succeed forward by building three essential strengths: Q1-IQ (intelligence-focus-strategic thought-ability to learn-relearn) Q2-EQ (emotional mastery-self management-relationship management-risk tolerance/resiliency, communication) Q3-SQ (values alignment/positive purpose, integrity of thought communication and action) Use not only strengths but changes, challenges, stressors, even failures to optimize potential? YES! Here are ten ways, ten practical, powerful ways to start building your 3Q Edge™: […]

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[…] Success at the speed of change means embracing a mind-set and skill-set that can help YOU play to strengths, AND USE changes, challenges, stressors, even failures to ideate, communicate, collaborate, lead and succeed forward by building three essential strengths:Q1-IQ (intelligence-focus-strategic thought-ability to learn-relearn)Q2-EQ (emotional mastery-self management-relationship management-risk tolerance/resiliency, communication)Q3-SQ (values alignment/positive purpose, integrity of thought communication and action)Use not only strengths but changes, challenges, stressors, even failures to optimize potential? YES! Here are ten ways, ten practical, powerful ways to start building your 3Q Edge™: STEP 1:. Embrace change, embrace your incredible ability to adapt, learn and relearn. See change with new eyes, eyes that help you reset default thinking patterns thinking. Recognize that change is not a problem; it is our greatest opportunity to adapt, learn, re-learn, evolve and lead forward. Our intrinsic or automatic response is to fear change, react to change, balk at change. So what? When we recognize that while this pattern served us well in the caves but will not take us forward today, we can embrace change with positivity. Push yourself to make a positive change in thinking, doing in a routine action every day. A small change made consistently is powerful and leads to BIG changes. […]

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